THE
Virtual Studio Pardes

The
virtual studio has current examples of my studio process work as well as the intention
and witness writings elicited by these images. The issues that are up for me have
to do with the artist/art therapist debate within myself. Is it selfish to devote
myself to my art? Is the art therapist a kind of phony voyeur who feeds on the
pain of others? Is making art an act of service to the world, if so, how?

The
Return of the Artist tempera, 20"X 26"(Text in bold is commentary
that occurred after the witness session).

8/10/04Intention:
I explore my feelings and get guidance from the Source about myself as a solitary
artist and the issue of community.

Witness: A house with a face and legs has its arm around a figure with aqua legs and an
egg-shaped torso, a tiny pointed hat and a red eye and mouth. They stand together
in a landscape of aqua and brown. A suggestion of a cloud overhead. The house
is pointing or gesturing upward. The white figure has sort of claw like feet.
They appear to be deep in conversation. The house is comforting or consoling or
advising the white figure who seems to be made up of desperate, no disparate,
parts, desperate? No, doesn't seem that. Is the egg shape a body, a shell, or
a shield? It looks like a shield all of a sudden. I guess I can ask, does anyone
want to speak? Am I interrupting you?

White
Guy: Fix my shirt, give me an ear, put stripes on my legs, make my head bigger.
Yes, I carry a shield. More about that later. (I made all the changes I was asked
for, as well as putting spirals into the sky and ask again can anyone speak?)

House: I am welcoming him home. He was off on a quest to receive his shield,
now his disparate parts are not desperate. One cannot enter community without
a shield, one cannot come in too open, too exposed

or
the rest of the group will be compelled to tear you limb from limb. It's just
a fact, not a failing. Human beings are hungry and they will eat you, you will
eat each other. I am a structure, I happen to look like a house because that is
a structure you understand and a home is a good metaphor for community. But most
people are homeless, if not literally than figuratively. If you show up looking
like a house, they will move into all your rooms and eat your food and sleep in
your bed, they will drop socks on your floor. You cannot be a house. This poor
guy is a little like a dunce. He isn't even a house and he invites everyone in
until he can't stand it and he has to fly away but he isn't really a bird. He
needed to go away to receive his shield.

P: House, I notice you do not have a door.

House:
That's correct, I told you, I am not really a house, I am an idea. Another idea
is a shield.

P: Why? Shouldn't community be about putting down your shield?

House:
No, that is where you are mistaken. This shield concentrates power and mirrors
it back to others, they can see themselves in its reflection and bask in its glow,
they do not have to eat you alive. Creative works are shields.

P: I am not sure I get this exactly.

House: Of course not, try this: there are many ways to be of service, they
are all ideas. Every one who is ever a mother must recover from the idea of 24
hour a day, always open service. That kind is special and reserved for your child.
The rest of the time you must work with your shield. Sometimes you can transform
into a house, a boat, an oasis or a whip, a cave, a closet, a grassy hill, an
ice cream soda but you must be sure to know how to keep changing and when to disappear
back into nothing. That is what the shield is for. You have a lot to learn about
this. P. Yes, I do, Thank you. You didn't say anything about the solitary artist.

House: That is who this is, the man of disparate parts. You'll learn more
about him as time goes by if you give him room to grow.

It
seems important to say that in the psychic space of the studio process, time doesn't
really exist. All images are in a timeless space where any image, regardless of
when it was created might join the conversation. I hear next from Virago.

There
are many things going on, many other images. I find myself choosing continually
between making my art and doing other things, all of which fall into the category
of helping other people. The artist and the art therapist in me are fighting with
each other. The next image is about that.

Bird
and Not-Birdwatercolor, 8"X 8 1/2"

10/25/04

Intention: I return to my practice and reconnect to you, Source. I regain
my bearings and the sense of love flowing through me. I am guided about various
things confronting me and I learn from them with compassion and discernment.

Witness: The
feel of the brush in my hand grounds me immediatelyˇI look around at the chaotic,
undated, unfinished work. Okay, let it go. I begin with a blue stain, fascinated
to watch it seep into the wet page. Soon it loses its' branching, brain-like shape
and fades. I am bored with itˇ.Two figures emerge,
a bird and one in a bird-like suit. Both are securely
on trees that are grounded off either side of the page.
Both look at the figure in mid-air, who is faced away
from the robin and

toward
the bird-manˇ.(I have a little 'mind-storm' where I go off thinking about a video
project I am working on). Suddenly the one on the left, the 'figure-in-bird's
clothing' seems like the art therapist and the robin seems like the artist. The
figure in the center, a lost piece of selfˇ. (On my desk is a quote from Angeles
Arrien from her Tarot Handbook, p. 72: "The bird within our nature is the spiritual
essence that is always free, vital and irrepressible. It is the part of our nature
that prompts us to let go so we can give birth to greater parts of who we are".)
I ask if anyone will speak:

Not-bird:
Notice your impulse to focus on the middle figure.

P: So unaesthetic, I want to know it and transform it.

Robin: I want to eat it, it looks like a fat juicy caterpillar to me.

Not-bird: I will take it in and give it shelter; it will fill the empty
space inside me and be grateful for the shelter.

Figure: I'm just shit, really a piece of solid undigested energy or matter.
I don't really care one way or the other although the not-bird will preserve me
in my present form for longer, maybe forever. I am a trophy for her. To the Robin,
I am just fuel.

10/26/04
(I download some images of robins and bring the painting into greater focus)

Witness: The robin looks cartoonish but animated. The not-bird kind and
contemplative. I feel more compassionate toward it than I did yesterday. I ask
the figure in the center to speak.

P: Why are you turned toward the not-bird?

Figure: I feel kindness and yes, a pity or sympathy with my patheticness.

Not-bird: I see your pain, know your pain, I can hold pain.

Robin: Pain, schmain. Let me chew you up and shit you out, you'll feed
the earth, the grass, become part of the whole again.

Figure: I'll be annihilated.

Robin: Yep! That's the
idea but its like going home, you fall apart into
atoms and molecules and then "you" whatever that
is, re-forms into something else, maybe you'll
fertilize a Jimson weed and become part of a beautiful
plant that provides visions and changes the world.

Not-bird: I'll keep you safe. I'll enfold you in my wings, Hashkevenu,
I'll shelter you until you feel stronger.

Robin: What are you talking about? Stronger what? A stronger walking shit?
A dried out turd frozen in the shape of a pseudo human being?

Figure:
That doesn't sound so bad.

Robin: If I eat you, you become part of me, I fly, I sing, I nest and raise
young.

Not-bird: If you come to
me you will be preserved, cradled, honored. I will
talk about you, I will sing about you, you don't
have to sing about yourselfˇ.look,
I need the figure to live, do you understand? That
mirror confirms my worth. The robin is greedy, flighty,
hungry, voracious even.

P: Hey trees, what do you say?

Tree: When things stay stuck and solid everything in the world starts to
die. Not seasonal death but die-off, you can't afford too many of these stuck
and solid places.

Not-bird:
You haven't understood me yet or appreciated my value. I am the witness. Witness
needs to come before transformation. My work is important too and you do it and
know it so stop trying to negate it.